Tag Archives: Max-Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, discusses the “price tag” attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, meant to extract a “price” when the Israeli government dares to defy the settlers’ wishes; why the state of Israel has no more respect for Israeli Arab property rights or religious expression than the settlers do; how Israel’s government allied with the Bedouin and Druze (and later betrayed them) to divide and conquer any resistance to land grabs; the reality of “land swap” deals – essentially the expulsion of 250,000 Palestinian citizens from Israel by redrawing the map around their homes; how the Shin Bet largely ignores Jewish terrorism but keeps a very watchful eye on peaceful Palestinian protesters; and why it’s about time to consider a normal democratic Israel instead of a Zionist colonial state in perpetual warfare, necessitating a propagandized population and mandatory military service.

Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, discusses his article “Meet the Right-Wing Hatemongers Who Inspired the Norway Killer” at alternet.org; the Islamophobes, including Pamela Geller, advocating for state terrorism and the wholesale killing of Muslims and Leftists; Republican campaign gimmicks that include loyalty oaths for Muslim government employees (e.g. mail carriers); changing the law in order to successfully prosecute Muslim charities with no ties to terrorism; Blumenthal’s previous piece “The Great Fear” at tomdispatch.com; how Islamophobia remained benign during the Bush administration and began to flourish once “secret Muslim” Obama was elected; the moral connection between the US military using white phosphorus in Fallujah and the IDF using it in Gaza during “Cast Lead;” and how all the energy and outrage is on the Right, while the progressive movement remains timid and ineffective.

Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, discusses how the Carmel wildfire reveals Israelâ€™s singular focus on militarization at the expense of basic public services like firefighting (necessitating humbling assistance from Turkey and the Palestinian Authority); how millions of trees hide the evidence of razed villages and the mass expulsion of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba; touring the new bohemian village of Ein Hod where the mosque of the displaced Palestinian population was converted into a bar; how the evangelical Christian GOD TV network is funding the Jewish National Fund to plant a million trees in the Negev desert (displacing Bedouin residents) to advertise the second coming of Christ; and why the Israeli settlements canâ€™t be undone while the government is staffed with, and controlled by, former and current settlers.

Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, discusses the religious justifications for killing non-Jews in the â€śKingâ€™s Torahâ€ť by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the tenuous far-right political alliance that makes Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hold his tongue on the eve of Palestinian peace talks (lest he have to negotiate land-for-peace), the inclusion of moderate secular Jews on the non-Jew hit list, the seeming triumph of rabbinical law over Israelâ€™s common law and the fascist Judea-state aspirations of Avigdor Liebermanâ€™s political affiliates.